Editors

Ever wondered what legendary stories from science fiction, horror and fantasy took place in your neck-of-the-woods? Maybe just curious exactly where those raiders finally put that Lost Ark into deep storage? This subtly distorted map of the 48 contiguous states does exactly that, and is aptly dubbed The Altered States of America (click the image for a better view).For this task, Chop Shop researched a large number of films, television shows, comics and more to discover not some these things were filmed or produced, but where according to the scripts and scenes these stories are supposed to have actually taken place. Continue at the jump for the key to the above map.

What made this difficult is the lack of general information available on the internet for this specific type of information. Most databases will have plenty of details about where filming took place, but as everybody knows — that often has nothing to do with the location the story is actually set in. As an example, King Kong was mostly filmed on a set in California while it continues to this day to be one of the most iconic images in film history for the city of New York. Other locales were hard to pin down such as Stanley Kubrick’s legendary epic horror film The Shining. Most of the film wasn’t even shot in the USA but instead on EMI sound sets in England. Meanwhile, the opening aerial scenes of the hotel which is now so familiar to fans worldwide were shot at Oregon’s Timberline Lodge. On top of that, The Stanley Hotel located in Colorado is said to have been Stephen King’s inspiration for his Overlook Hotel and actually began writing the novel while staying there with his wife. In the end, the novel winds up providing the definitive location: the Colorado Rockies in the fictional town of Sidewinder.

The final tally for the resulting map comes to 136 illustrated references reaching back in time to the golden age of television and The Twilight Zone to references much more recent like The Walking Dead. Take a look at the full key image here (or click the image above) and see who your fictional neighbors are. You can also click here for a higher resolution desktop wallpaper of the art at 1920 x 1400 pixels. The project was eventually screen printed after a successful Kickstarter campaign that was funded at 364% of the original goal. While that campaign ended in 2013, the resulting prints with more items added since can be purchased online from the Altered States store.

But here is a warning… If you live in the northeast, look out for martians — if you live in the south beware of zombies, but if you live on the west coast be ready for anything.